Child of Sorrows

by Michaelbrent Collings

  It was almost true.

  Only the need of others pulled him away – the realization that there were so many who were in so much pain in this corrupt Empire – and even then, it was only slightly. Even when working covertly as a freedom fighter, supplying rebels with money and the poorest of the poor with illegal aid, Creed still managed to make it home for dinner, more nights than not.

  But then came the one thing that no love could deny, that no affection could hold back.

  Creed had been killed, and his youngest son – Arrow's brother – beside him.

  Creed, Lord of the Southern Grasslands, had been murdered by an assassin of the Empire. By a Blessed One.

  By Sword.

  That was one of the other intersections that Arrow saw. When he first saw her, in one of the very towns that his father had worked so hard to help, to save, and she was in his power and helpless and he knew she had killed his father and he could have killed her in that moment… and did not.

  Because in her he saw the great intersection of his life. Greater than any bullet fired, any arrow loosed. Greater even than the intersection between the Lord of the Southern Grasslands and the rest of his family.

  He resisted at first. He hated her, even. That was one of the first truths he found in his life – that love and hate were not always exclusive. That you could love something for much of what it was, what it represented, and still hate a part of it, a thing it had been, a thing it had done.

  Sword had killed his father. Had been there when that devil-child Marionette had murdered his brother. He could not forget that.

  But she had not known what she was doing. She had thought she was saving the Empire from a villain. She had thought she was doing right, tricked by the Chancellor and his puppet, the first Malal.

  More than that, though… she was strong. She was smart. She was honest.

  She was good.

  Arrow fell in love with her almost immediately, so fast the hate had not cooled, let alone fallen to the dull ache that would later become simple grief and loss. But he denied it and denied it, held it as far back as he could.

  And now it was in him, and he knew his flight was bonded to her side, just as Creed's flight had been to that of his family. Arrow had not stepped forward to take his place – the Heathered Hall remained empty these months since his father's death – but he was now the Lord of the Southern Grasslands, and was, like his father, bound.

  To her.

  So when Cloud tore him away from her, wrenched him off the wall with the devastating imprecision of his Gift, it more than spun him sick. It tore his heart away. He knew what would happen next – what must come. It was her way.

  Sword would fight. And it didn't matter that it made more sense for him to be here, an overwatch position that would allow him to use his Gift to best advantage. The fact was, he did not want to leave her. The separation was agony, if only for the fact that he knew his bullets would now take that much longer to reach her, to save her.

  Then things grew strange, and Arrow had no time – even with his mind that could calculate so many angles, impacts, speeds in every second – to do anything but concentrate on that strangeness. On the little girl, with a woolly in her hands. Even this far away, Arrow's Gifted sight allowed him to see her easily, and to see what happened when the creature leaped off her arm, and grew, and then the girl melted into the creature.

  The simple young man beside her clambered on.

  And they were his enemies.

  Angles, directions, deflections. An arrow was always a threat, but that threat was merely potential until it was loosed. At the moment it flew, though, it entered his realm, it became his subject. He saw it, captured it, and utterly controlled it.

  The two creatures that came through the hole in the wall were arrows unloosed. But when the woolly changed, the girl became one with it, and the big man climbed atop the monster it became – they were loosed. They were his.

  He smiled.

  He pulled a gun from his hip. Waited. Waited. He could have shot that faster, but he wanted them well clear of the fight that he knew was coming between Sword and the flying, armored thing. He wanted clear sightlines between him and them – between him and her.

  He fired.

  The shot went where he intended – and yet it missed.

  He had aimed for the creature's eye. Had seen the bullet fly forward – followed it with his sight as only he could do. The bullet hit.

  And did nothing.

  The creature did not break stride, did not even blink. It was as though the eye itself swallowed the bullet, and the creature went on unharmed.

  The next shot had the same effect – which was to say, none at all. Still Arrow kept firing, firing, firing, loading a new cylinder so fast that it was as though the shots continued uninterrupted. And not a single hit did anything at all.

  He moved his aim. Shot the young man. He felt a twinge of shame doing so – the man was simply riding, and riding with simple joy on his face. But he was also coming for Arrow, there was no doubt. And that made him an enemy.

  The shot took the man. Tore off his throat, and from the twist of his neck and the angle and velocity of the bullet and the way it met with the man himself as he rocketed toward the palace – a separate building within the castle keep – it should have torn his head off.

  The young man rocked. His head snapped back so hard that, even if it remained attached to his neck, the bones should have cracked in a dozen different places.

  Then he brought his head forward again. And Arrow nearly screamed at what he saw.

  The man's eyes were gone. Disappeared as though they had never been, and in their place was only darkness. Not the hollow darkness of a skull where a bullet had plowed a path not even the black emptiness of death itself. No, this was something far deeper, and uglier, and more terrifying. For a moment Arrow felt as though he were staring at the Netherworlds. Not the blazing fires and burning pits told of in the Cathedrals – but the dark, mad places where the damned must forever scream, and scream in silence for the screams are theirs alone with none to hear and none to care.

  Arrow looked at a madness so complete that he felt, for a moment, that he must go mad himself.

  The man crawled to the top of the creature, and he was changed. Gone was the child-like joy, the sense that he was simply here for this moment of wild riding. Now, there was a sense of…

  Destruction.

  That was it. And not a contained destruction. Nothing clean, like an arrow or a bullet shot with precision by a man who never does – never can – miss. This was an ugly destruction, that would rend and destroy anything that came in its way.

  The proof of that came a moment later.

  Several guards – not the Imperial Guard, who were no doubt clustered tightly around Malal, acting as his last line of defense against this strange attack, but regular Imperial Army stationed at the castle – ran forward. The woolly beast was faster than any land beast Arrow had ever seen, but the guards ran at a well-timed angle and managed to intercept it.

  They had the same lack of effect as Arrow's bullets had had. The monster pulled two of them apart with the huge, clawed hands at the ends of its horribly-jointed arms. Two more it trampled.

  One more it simply swallowed from the waist up, leaving the rest to fall in the dust behind it, spitting out the upper half a moment later.

  One guard managed to grab the beast from behind. And this one the man on its back dealt with.

  The fiend with no eyes reached down and, without losing his grip on the monster's back, he tore the flesh from the guard's body.

  The guard went bravely, nobly, stabbing his foe even as he was pulled to pieces. But the cuts did not seem to bother the berserker, only to inflame him. He began screaming, too, and now was using tooth and nail to yank flesh from the other man's body.

  The guard stopped moving. Arrow did not look away, though he wished he could. He had to know what his enemy would do, what he was capable o
f.

  The berserker managed to not merely destroy the guard's body, but to render it unfit for burial. Screaming all the while, yanking bits away and dropping them like breadcrumbs behind.

  The monster screamed. The berserker shrieked. And Arrow could not tell which was worse.

  More guards angled –

  (angles vectors good angle they're coming well have to help what to do?)

  – out of a barracks. They came more carefully than the first few, and had used the moments the woolly creature took to travel the courtyard to formulate a strategy.

  Several led with nets and weighted ropes, casting them at the feet of the creature, trying to trip it if not ensnare it outright. It tripped, but managed to stay on its feet.

  The next guards rushed forward, attacking with long spears, holding them over the circular shields favored by the people of Arrow's own region.

  Do I know any of them? Are any from the Grasslands?

  They jabbed at the creature as it fell. It whipped around, shearing the spearheads off, and as it whirled the berserker threw himself from the creature's back. He flew over the heads of the spear- and ropemen, right into the third line of guards, those bearing swords and crossbows who were now rushing into the fray. A few of the swordsmen got their blades pointed at the madman, a few of the bowmen actually managed to loose their bolts.

  The berserker flew into the blades as though they didn't even matter. He bled freely from a dozen and then a score and then a hundred wounds – any one of which should have been a crippling if not a killing blow. But none seemed to matter. Indeed, the opposite was true: with each drop of blood he lost, he seemed to grow in strength and madness.

  And the blood – the wounds – disappeared as fast as they came. Gone, with only the increased rage of the berserker as proof they had ever been.

  A swordsman ran the berserker through, but the madman simply ran forward, continuing up the blade to crush the man's head between his hands, then ripping the blade out of his own body and using it on another guard – not to slash at him, but to bludgeon him to death with the hilt.

  A bowman shot him, and at that close range, the bolt exploded right through the madman. He didn't mind that any more than he had the sword. He was already running toward the bowman when it happened, and without changing direction or even looking behind him he swiveled with super-human speed and caught the bolt after it exited the body. Then – still moving forward at incredible speed – jammed it through the eye of the man who had shot him.

  These were the lucky ones.

  In comparison to the berserker, the beast was a thing of clean mercy. It broke, tore, rent. But it did so as though the guards were simply other creatures that had had the mistaken arrogance to wander into its marked territory. They must pay, and pay with fury, but without the mad malice of the berserker.

  The net- and ropemen quickly found they had made a grave mistake in not trying to simply tangle the creature, but to hold it. The three men who held the ropes were yanked off their feet and right into the creature's clutches and were dead as fast as that.

  The fourth one who held onto the rope was nearly yanked into the creature's grasp has well, but Arrow fired his gun, the rope parted, and the man fell back.

  It still did him no good – nor did the ten shots Arrow sent into the creature – because in two steps the beast was upon the guard, and that guard, too, was dead.

  The lancers' weapons had been shredded by the creature, but they were brave. None retreated. They attacked with the swords at their belts and, in a few cases, with the wreckage of their spears.

  Nothing worked. None survived.

  The berserker found himself alone in a wide circle of blood and death. He began running in a random direction, screaming that same mindless scream of mayhem. The creature roared for him, but the berserker ignored it.

  The creature roared again, and Arrow blinked as… a symbol appeared under the creature's fur. No one else could have spotted it, but his Gift let him see it clearly, like a brand burning on the skin of the creature's chest. The symbol of a Bishop of Faith.

  As soon as it happened, the berserker stopped running away. It turned back and ran and leaped back to the creature's back, and as he did, Arrow thought he saw a glow under the ruins of his shirt. The glint of something that seemed like neither skin nor the reflection of blood.

  A gem?

  The sight was hidden for a moment as the man clambered atop the beast, then Arrow saw it clearly as he resumed his place on the monster's withers, held his hands high, and the last bits of his shirt fell away.

  The berserker had bathed in blood. But there, among the blood and bits of other things that Arrow preferred not to think about… it was a gem, but one unlike any Arrow had ever seen. It glowed from within, a bilious yellow that brought to mind sickness, unclean things.

  Like the brand on the monster's chest, the gem was carved in the shape of the Bishop's Symbol.

  Together, the beast and man-beast roared. And ran once more for Arrow.

  More guards huddled around the side of a stable, ready to run out and attack the invaders. Ready to die.

  Arrow waited until the creature was almost there. Then he holstered his gun and in the same motion, switched to the double crossbow slung below it. The crossbow was a handheld version he had designed himself, with two bolts locked into place and ready to be fired in succession without reloading.

  The creature was far enough away that the shot was nearly impossible. For anyone but him.

  He loosed the first bolt.

  It hit the ground twenty feet away from the stable, between it and the thundering beast.

  The tips were also of his own design. The work of a Thread, a Shock, and some minerals he had found while hiding in the caverns the Cursed Ones used as a hideout.

  The explosion was huge. The heat intense. But, again… angles. Velocity. Result. The explosion billowed into the face of the creature, directed mainly away from the men hiding behind the stable. The stable itself creaked and then collapsed, but it did so slowly enough that the men were able to pitch themselves out of the way, so when it fell it simply fell as a wall between them and the monsters.

  They were safe.

  Arrow breathed a sigh of relief, though whatever relief he felt was certainly short-lived.

  They know where I am. They're coming for me.

  They'll have to come through the palace. Through all the people in it.

  He turned. No thought of escape now, only of the possibility of meeting them partway down. Perhaps he could save some lives if they were stopped –

  (if they get what they want if they get me if they kill me)

  – somewhere in the middle of the palace, as opposed to killing their way to its very highest point.

  A rumble stopped him. He turned back.

  The creature had leaped. Not through a door, nor a window. It had hit the wall with its full force, and now clung there for a moment before beginning a hacking, haphazard scramble up the side of the wall. The berserker still clung to its back, and looked with its sightless stare directly at Arrow as his unholy steed clawed its way roughly upward.

  They're outside. No one here. Just me.

  Angles. Speed.

  He loosed the second bolt of his crossbow. He had thought about using it on the beast – just as he thought about using it on the creature earlier – but worried it might have no effect. So he shot at something he knew would react.

  The bolt impacted the side of the palace just between the creature's front legs as it pulled itself up another two feet. Buried itself and exploded in the instant that it would hit the wall, but also be at least somewhat beneath the creature.

  The explosion rippled through the stone, not causing the structure to tumble or even sway, but definitely sending a tremor through the soles of Arrow's feet.

  The creature had been hit; Arrow couldn't see through the dust to tell if the berserker had been wounded when the arrow found its home. Either way, bo
th were falling, as the wall had fallen apart beneath the monster's claws.

  But they didn't fall far.

  The monster might have been surprised. Perhaps it was even stunned. But it wasn't hurt – not that Arrow could see – and before it had fallen ten feet it turned and jabbed a claw into the wall and stopped falling and began its climb again.

  Arrow backed away from the wall, trying to figure out his next move. He cast a look in Sword's direction, and saw only dust and the flash of flame – her weapons moving nearly as fast as the bullets he fired.

  Hopefully you're having more luck with yours.

  The tower rumbled, the roar of the creature grew louder as it drew close. The berserker was not screaming, but it gave a high, keening whine that spoke of strange hungers, terrifying needs that none other than the mad could understand.

  Arrow looked behind him. There was a door leading into the tower, of course, and from there to the palace proper. But he couldn't use it. To do so would be to kill any who got in the path of the creature –

  (creatures that madman is more a monster than the monster)

  – and perhaps even draw them that much closer to Malal himself.

  Who are these people? And what do they want with him?

  Another question to which he had no answer.

  He looked one last time at the open door, beckoning him to a false safety.

  Then turned back to the wall of the tower. The roars were so loud he could almost feel the creature's breath on his cheek, and the madman's lament threatened to drive Arrow to simply step off the tower and save his attackers the trouble.

  Arrow looked around, trying to see something, anything, that would help him escape this moment, would give him a way to kill these monsters or if not that slow them down.

  He didn't want to die here. His own arrow still flew beside the path of Sword. He was not ready for it to come to earth.